Today (13th December) is St. Lucia Parrot day and people are celebrating the world’s most beautiful parrot everywhere…even here in Malvik ;) – well, this is how I interpret this important feast day here….and the presence of this parrot in my indoor forest garden helps to brighten up the dark days of winter, together with the waxwings (aka arctic parrots, which are foraging in the garden as we speak!)….
When we visited the island in 1981, we hooked up with the local naturalist’s trust who gave a talk at the hotel about this bird and we were lucky enough to see one that had been found injured. This was just after Hurricane Allen had devastated the island and the population crashed to under 100 birds as reported in this video. It’s good to know that the population is now over 1,000 thanks to the conservation efforts for this wonderful endemic species found nowhere else than on this Caribbean island:
Waxwings (sidensvans) and siskin (grønnsisik) foraging under the bird feeder today.
With siskin and tree sparrow seen today, that brings this week’s species count to 21 species in the garden…in addition various other species have been seen flying over and on the fjord!
A flock of 10 bramblings (bjørkefink) and 3 chaffinches in the garden this morning. They were also taking kale (Brassica oleracea) seed (second film). I hadn’t noticed this before! A plan then to grow kale seed for the finches in future..
Two nuthatches (spettmeis) on the bird feeder this morning with a short guest appearance of a male chaffinch (bokfink) :) See the video below! A dark morning here, the sun has now set until it rises again around 14th January! Only secondhand sun now clipping the tops of the trees on Malvikodden:
It’s about as like winter England as it gets here this morning, grey and drizzling….so nice to have a flock of 17 goldfinches (stillits) brightening up the day and lots of other birds too!
Hawfinch (kjernebiter)
Robin (rødstrupe) with brambling (bjørkefink)
There was also a flock of 100 waxwings feeding in the garden, nuthatches and a treecreeper…Malvik is bird paradise at this time of year!
One of my favourite multi-purpose vegetables and one of my first unusual vegetables that I grew in my garden in the 80s was burdock or borre, more specifically various Japanese cultivars of Arctium lappa, hardly used in Europe and North America apart from a few foragers, even though it’s a common wild plant and hardy. Although it is best known as a root vegetable, there are varieties bred for their leaf petioles and the flower stems are really delicious! If you add to this that the seeds are foraged by various birds like goldfinches and greenfinches in winter in addition to being impressive photogenic plants which tolerated shady conditions, no permaculture garden should be without them!
In the album below are pictures I’ve taken over the years, in my garden, in botanical gardens and in the wild. There follows links to various blog posts about burdock!
